CHAPTER XIII - The Gunter Estate

The area with which this chapter is concerned is shown
by the heavy line on figures 82 and 83. It was laid out
in buildings, which largely survive, between about 1865
and 1896 on the estates of the brothers James and Robert
Gunter, and is essentially a continuation of the development of their estates south of Old Brompton Road described in volume XLI of the Survey of London. Here more
than there the building period ran on into the age of flats
and red brick, and one manifestation of that era, the big
individualistic houses of George and Peto in Collingham
Gardens, has demanded separate treatment in Chapter
XII. Like the southern part of the Gunter property this
area was acquired piecemeal over three generations at the
hands of James Gunter I, the Berkeley Square confectioner (died 1819), his son Robert I (died 1852) and
Robert's sons Robert II and James II. Here the accumulation of land began in 1797 and was completed in 1857.

As south of Old Brompton Road, the building done
under the independent ownerships of the two brothers
seems to have been all of a piece, under the same professional guidance, and forming really a single enterprise.
It was carried on, with the slight exception of Barkston
Gardens, regardless of the old boundaries and landmarks.

The Period before 1865

In the sixteenth century all the area may have been part
of the holding known as Courtfield, which extended as far
east as Hogmore Lane (Gloucester Road). (fn. 1) By the 1640s
a small southern part was called Little Courtfield or
Daniel's Field (fn. 2) and by 1694 a portion abutting on Earl's
Court Lane Four Acre Courtfield, (fn. 3) leaving the designation
Great Courtfield for most of the remainder of the area discussed here (fig. 84). In the eighteenth century a southwestern portion around the main farmhouse (and including part of the former Four Acre Courtfield) became
known as Home Field. (fn. 4) Little Courtfield long remained
copyhold of Earl's Court manor but by the eighteenth century manorial control had lapsed over most of the area.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the chief
tenants of the manor of Earl's Court here were the Arnold
family, who in 1656 were joined by marriage to the Greene
family that owned the Stag brewery in Westminster. (fn. 5) The
Greenes and their descendants retained their ownership
until 1793, when all the area except Little Courtfield, a
seven-and-a-half-acre piece eastward of it, and the
southern half of Home Field passed briefly to the surgeon
John Hunter, a long-time resident here, until his death
a few months later. (fn. 6) James Gunter came on the scene in
1797 as the purchaser of a sub-lease of a large area comprising the northern half of Home Field and the southern half
of Great Courtfield from the farming lessee, (fn. 7) and two years
later bought the freehold from the representatives of Hunter (fig. 85). (fn. 8) In 1805 the Chelsea building-developer
Thomas Smith made a very brief appearance in this part
of Earl's Court, buying the northern portion of Courtfield
and a one-acre site south of Hunter's old dwelling from
the lawyer who had himself bought Hunter's properties. (fn. 9)
In the same year Smith bought the southern part of Home
Field from a landowner south of Old Brompton Road,
William Boulton Poynton. (fn. 10) For whatever reason, Smith
sold the Great Courtfield and one-acre sites within months
to James Gunter, (fn. 11) and the Home Field site to him in
1807. (fn. 12) Hunter's old home itself, Earl's Court House, was
bought by James Gunter's son Robert Gunter I in 1829. (fn. 13)
Little Courtfield, with the seven and a half acres, remained
in the ownership of representatives of the Greene family
until 1841 and both were bought by Robert Gunter's son
James Gunter II from representatives of William Hoof in
1857. (fn. 14) (For William Hoof see pages 117, 323.)

A deed of 1793 relating to Home Field, (Great) Courtfield and the nearly adjacent Pound Field testifies to the
tendency, so far as the actual tenants of the land were concerned, towards amalgamation of holdings, three farmers
occupying five closes where in earlier days six had
occupied nine. (fn. 6)

Earl's Court House and its Predecessors

There were few buildings in the area before 1865. By the
1660s or 1670s one substantial house was to be found adjacent to Earl's Court Lane where Barkston Gardens now
meets Earl's Court Road. It was at that period occupied
by the Arnold family in the person of William Arnold. (fn. 15)
In 1687–8 the house passed to John Greene, brewer, who
rebuilt it, and died shortly afterwards. His widowed
mother and younger brother then sold it, in 1694, with
its curtilage, for £3,100. (fn. 16) The purchaser was Henry Guy,
Secretary of the Treasury, an elderly and very rich man
with a house in St. James's Street and a country house
at Tring. There Wren had designed his house but it seems
unlikely that at Earl's Court Guy would have rebuilt the
new house he had just bought at a high price. Whether
so or not Guy's house was probably very handsome. Writing during his occupancy, in 1705, John Bowack described
it as ‘but lately Built after the Modern Manner, and standing upon a Plain where nothing can intercept the Sight
looks very Stately at a Distance, [the] Gardens are very
good …’. (fn. 17) Descriptions in the 1690s emphasize the
garden, mentioning ‘walkes’, ‘waterworkes’, ‘engines for
water’, a summer-house and great garden gates with a
‘sweep’ of ground on the outer or eastern side of them. (fn. 18)
(One of the piers of this gate seems, rather strangely, to
survive in situ, see below.) In 1738 there was ‘a Fountain
in the Garden’ and ‘Great plenty of fine water both in
the House and Gardens’. By then, if not before, the
premises included a marble-paved, tile-walled bagnio, or
bath-house, with a painted ceiling, and a marble-paved
and tiled dairy. There were eight rooms to a floor. (fn. 19) A
problem was access. Guy had rented a right of way along
a field-path going north-eastward from a local landowner,
Matthew Child, but complained in 1703 that it had
become ‘so deep and mirye that in some places thereof
the wheeles of the coaches … have been up to the Axle
Trees in dirt so that all the strength of the horses hath
been hardly able to Recover them out againe’. In consequence ‘severall Persons of Quality’ who visited Guy had
‘upon that Account forborne to make their resort thither
as formerly’. (fn. 20) Perhaps for that reason Guy was soon saying he stayed there only ‘for about three months in the
Summer time’. (fn. 21)

On Guy's death in 1711 the house passed to one of his
executors, William Pulteney, and from him in 1716 to a
family called Wright (fn. 22) who retained it until 1756, when
they sold it, together with the area between its curtilage
and Pound Field, to a West End builder, Roger Blagrave,
carpenter. (fn. 23) He evidently pulled the big house down
(though seemingly not its front and back garden gates).

By 1758 Blagrave had built two houses fronting Earl's
Court Road as the beginnings of what became The Terrace
(fig. 86 and see page 215). In 1760 one of these was taken
by the 32-year-old surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter. (fn. 24)
Later that year Hunter went as army surgeon on an expedition to Belleisle and returned to England only in 1763.
He reappears as a resident at Earl's Court in 1765—this
time, however, in what was evidently a new house on the
site of Guy's mansion. (fn. 24) Blagrave had granted him a lease
of the site, without reference to any building then standing
upon it, in that year. (fn. 25) Here Hunter remained until his
death in 1793. The energy of his mind and the force of
his personality stamped itself upon his surroundings and
made his home here notable in his own day and an object
of interest to later writers. (fn. 26) The house survived until
1886, and was photographed in 1875 (Plate 86b, 86c). (fn. 27) But
it is not certain how much of what can be seen in these
views dates from Hunter's day. Three years after he began
to live here, in 1768, the rateable value of the house was
trebled, and near the end of his life, in 1790–2, a wing
was added at each end. (fn. 24) But later plans seem to show that
it was extended backwards between 1811 and 1836, (fn. 28) and
suggest that the plain late-Georgian exterior which it
exhibited in 1875 might have been, at least in part, a recasing later in date than Hunter's occupation. (fn. n1)

Who it was Hunter employed as architect for his house
is not known. He married in 1771, and his wife's brother-in-law was the architect Robert Mylne. It was probably
the brother of Hunter's wife, Robert Home, a pupil of
Angelica Kauffmann, who painted removable pictorial
panels for the interior of the house. (fn. 30) What attracted most
attention, however, was not the house but the outbuildings
and garden where Hunter kept a great variety of animals
for observation and experiment. (fn. 31) A subterranean passage
on the north side of the house led to a sunken area or ‘cloister’ off which various compartments opened, (fn. 32) and a conspicuous feature of the garden was a mound containing
vaulted byres for the larger animals. (fn. 33)

The year before he died Hunter bought the freehold
of his house (fn. 34) (and in the year of his death most of the
remainder of the area from the representatives of the
Greene family. (fn. 35) )

After his death Earl's Court House, as it was called, was
sold to a John Bayne, probably a fellow-Scot and later said
to have been of Calcutta or Bengal, for £2,205 (plus £2,704
for the northern half of Great Courtfield and Pound
Field). (fn. 36) Bayne was reported to be intending to maintain
Hunter's ‘menagerie’, (fn. 37) but soon died (when his effects
here included ‘a large Billiard Table’), (fn. 38) and the house
passed to a successful lawyer, John Hanson. (fn. 39) He was solicitor and quasi-guardian to the young Lord Byron, who
stayed with the Hansons here. (fn. 40) In 1802 Hanson sold the
house for £4,000 to the Duke of Richmond, who promptly
transferred it to his ‘housekeeper’ and mistress, ‘Mary
Blesard then known by the name of Mrs. Bennett’. (fn. 41) The
Earl of Albemarle occupied the house c. 1806–10, (fn. 24)
presumably as her tenant, and in 1811 she and her trustees
sold it to Nathaniel Gostling of Doctors' Commons,
who remained until 1829 and then sold it to Robert
Gunter I. (fn. 42)

Gunter lived nearby at Earl's Court Lodge (see below)
and let the house to a Mary Bradbury, who opened a
private lunatic asylum for ladies here in 1832. In the 1840s
it accommodated some twenty-six to thirty inmates. It
contained many separate sitting and sleeping rooms: the
‘seclusion room’ was lined with painted canvas. (fn. 43) Mrs.
Bradbury was succeeded in the same business in 1852 by
her niece Elizabeth Burney, (fn. 24) who took a lease from Robert
Gunter II in 1855 at some £458 per annum, (fn. 44) and she
in 1864 by Robert Gardiner Hill, (fn. 45) who maintained the
asylum until his death in 1878. His widow continued here
until her lease expired in 1885, (fn. 46) and in 1886 the house
was pulled down for the building of Barkston Gardens.
A pier of the great back-garden gate, probably dating from
John Greene's day, survives behind No. 1 Barkston
Gardens, but the central plantation seems to retain no
vestige of Hunter's animal-haunted grounds.

Figure 82:

Gunter estate. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–76

Figure 83:

Gunter estate, showing the areas of operation of building lessees named in Chapter XIII. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–76

Figure 84:

Former field-names in the area discussed in Chapters XIII and XIV

Earl's Court Lodge and its Predecessors

On Rocque's map of 1741–6 another house is shown abutting on Earl's Court Road south of the house described
above. This stood near what is now the northern corner
of Earl's Court Road and Bolton Gardens, and was in
Rocque's day in the hands of the farmer of the land behind
it—at that time a Robert Payne. He had succeeded in the
1730s to a Joseph Surety or Sureties, whose name (or a
forebear's) in turn goes back in the rate assessments to
the 1680s. (fn. 47) Payne (or perhaps a son) was succeeded in
the farm and farmhouse by a Benjamin Bryon in 1772 until
1797, (fn. 24) when Bryon sold his lease of the house and of the
extensive cultivated land attached to it. (fn. 7) The purchaser,
who two years later bought the freehold from the representatives of John Hunter, (fn. 8) was the confectioner, James Gunter, and the house became the Gunters' home for nearly
sixty years, as well as the centre of their active marketgardening business. (In the confectioner's day it was
mockingly called Currant-Jelly Hall by Lord Albemarle's
children at Earl's Court House. (fn. 48) ) Three generations lived
here until Robert II acquired Wetherby Grange and
removed to Yorkshire about 1857. A comparison of the
L-shaped building shown by Rocque and the longitudinal
house on Starling's map of 1822 strongly suggests a
rebuilding between those dates and it seems likely Gunter
built a house for his own use between 1802 and 1805. Possibly the Gunters' extensive farm-buildings shown by Starling near what is now the south-west corner of Collingham
Gardens were erected by Gunter following his conversion
of the old farmhouse into a genteel residence. A painting
of 1857 suggests the house had already been given a casing
of rather dull Victorian-Classic (Plate 86a). (fn. 40) In that year
a sale of the deceased Robert Gunter's furniture from the
house hints at indoor and outdoor pleasures, if decorous
ones—a ‘full sized bagatelle board by Thurston’ and a
britzska, four-wheel phaeton, chariot, dog-cart and spring
van. (fn. 50)

From 1857 to 1859 the house was occupied by the sisters
of the Order of the Assumption, before they settled in
Kensington Square, and the name The Priory continued
in use by the wine merchant and then the naval officer
who succeeded them. Later it was called Park House and
as such was occupied by the impresario Ernest Gye and
his wife, the singer Madame Albani, from 1899 to 1909.
From 1921 it was used by the Y.W.C.A. until 1973, when
the old house was replaced by the present hostel built as
No. 227 Earl's Court Road in 1974–5 to designs by E. F.
Starling, architect, of Croydon. (fn. 51)

Figure 85:

The dates of acquisition by the Gunter family of areas discussed in Chapters XIII and XIV

This also took in the site of a house built immediately
to the south, in 1870, on the northern corner of Wetherby
Road (now Bolton Gardens). The builder was John Spicer
under lease from Robert Gunter. (fn. 52)

Villa-building c. 1805–10

In 1805 the recent owner of Earl's Court House, John
Hanson, sold to Thomas Smith of Chelsea a longitudinal
piece of ground south of that property and abutting on
Earl's Court Road at what is now the northern corner with
Bramham Gardens. A newly built house stood on it, probably erected since 1802 and known as Prospect Cottage. (fn. 53)
Smith, an important property developer in Chelsea, was
having only a brief venture in this part of Earl's Court,
and in the same year he sold Prospect Cottage (and also
extensive land nearby) to James Gunter. (fn. 54) It was a sizeable
house, respectably inhabited, and Gunter thought its
privacy worth the diversion elsewhere of a public footpath
(see page 215). But possibly its later juxtaposition to the
grounds of the lunatic asylum at Earl's Court House was
eventually deleterious and its last days before it was
vacated c. 1873 were as a laundry. (fn. 55)

Having acquired Prospect Cottage and made Earl's
Court Lodge his home James Gunter went on to build
villa-residences in adequate but ‘manageable’ grounds on
land of some four acres which he also bought from Smith,
in 1807, on the other, southern, side of the Lodge
(fig. 87). (fn. 56) This extended, in modern terms, from the
southern end of Earl's Court Road along the north side
of Old Brompton Road at its western end. Here Gunter
built six houses, including two semi-detached pairs, in
c. 1808–10. Part of the road frontage conformed to and
defined the slow drift round from one country road to
another that Rocque shows at the junction of the two roads
and that is preserved in the present curve of the (later)
shops at this corner.

Figure 86:

Earl's Court House and The Terrace, Earl's Court Road, with the site of Barkston Gardens
indicated by a broken line. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1862–72

The north-westernmost semi-detached pair, near what
is now the Earl's Court Road end of Wetherby Mews and
latterly called Walton House and/or Lodge, was built, like
Cresswell Lodge south of Old Brompton Road, by James
Faulkner of Jermyn Street, bricklayer, in 1808, under
building lease from James Gunter. It was sub-leased by
Faulkner to the first residents—the northern house to a
coachmaker in St. Martin's Lane and the southern to a
wine merchant. (fn. 57) Oak Villa (or Oakville), first occupied
in 1813, stood at about Nos. 224–226 Old Brompton Road.
Clarence Villa, first occupied in 1812, stood at about
Nos. 208–212, and here the actress Madame Vestris was
briefly the occupant in 1837. (fn. 58) The easternmost semidetached pair at about the site of Nos. 202–204 was built
by a plumber and glazier, Thomas Ivey, in or just before
1810, when he had a lease of the westernmost, called Merrington House, from James Gunter. Here the first occupant was a General John Sontag. The eastern house of
the pair, confusingly called Western House, was leased by
Gunter direct to the first occupant. At Merrington House
Ivey mortgaged his lease straight back to Gunter. (fn. 59)

This latter pair was demolished for the building of
Nos. 202–204 Old Brompton Road in 1887, the others for
the ranges called Bolton Gardens West and Wetherby Terrace in c. 1875–7. Unlike the villas erected on the south
side of Old Brompton Road in the extension of this phase
of building none here seems to be recorded in pictures.

Figure 87:

Villas north of Old Brompton Road in c. 1865. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1862–72, with modern road names

Market-gardening and its Supersession

Gunter's villas did not presage any wider development of
his property north of Old Brompton Road in building. The
area was already famous for and prosperous in its commercial garden cultivation. Rocque's map of 1741–6 had
shown nursery gardens, market gardens or orchards
occupying the western part of the area adjacent to Earl's
Court Lane. Starling's map of 1822 shows the eastward
spread of gardens and orchards and by 1843, when the
northern half of Great Courtfield shown as arable by Starling was market garden, the spread of market gardens was
complete. (fn. 60) On James Gunter's death in 1819 his son
obtained an Act of Parliament to facilitate the grant of
building leases (fn. 61) but on the Kensington properties Robert
Gunter devoted himself rather to the market-gardening
business. Writers in the 1820s cited him for the extent and
variety of his production and the progressiveness of his
methods, ‘the combined effects of capital, talent and industry’. His steam-heated greenhouses particularly attracted
attention. (fn. 62) His residence here, in succession to his father,
was perhaps a further inducement to keep serious building
development first to Chelsea and then south of Old
Brompton Road. Robert Gunter died in 1852. His sons
Robert II and James II after service in the Crimea did
not keep the old house on: James pursued a successful
career as a regular soldier and Robert removed his home
to Yorkshire about 1857. When James paid £12,600 for
thirteen acres including what had been Little Courtfield
in the same year it was as building land, (fn. 63) and although
the field behind the old Gunter house at Earl's Court
Lodge was a cricket ground for a few years from 1858
onwards (fn. 24) the rising value of land for buildings here was
not to be ignored. Six years after James Gunter's purchase
the Copyhold Commissioners were being told of a value
of between £2,000 and £3,000 per acre for land
hereabouts. (fn. 64) The approach of the Metropolitan District
Railway was crucial. In 1863 James Gunter paid £4,200
to enfranchise his Little Courtfield land from manorial
tenure. (fn. 65) In 1865–6 he and his brother Robert sold land
a little further north to the railway company for their line
and the first Earl's Court Station, (fn. 66) and at the same time
Gunter building began, after an adjustment of boundaries
between the brothers along intended streets, (fn. 67) on James's
recently enfranchised land.

Development under James and Robert
Gunter from 1865

On the sixty or so acres of the brothers' estates some 430
houses, 26 houses-over-shops, 114 stables or coachhouses, a dozen blocks of flats, and a church were raised
between c. 1865 and c. 1896. The church of St. Jude's,
Courtfield Gardens, is described in Chapter XXIII. The
arrangements by which the rest of the area was developed
were similar to those already used by the Gunters. (fn. 68) Leases
were granted to more than a score of building tradesmen
for terms of ninety-nine years expiring between 1969 and
1986. No part of the term was conceded at a peppercorn
rent. (fn. n2)

The supervision of the Gunters' surveyors, George and
Henry Godwin, was probably comparable to what they
exercised in the area south of Old Brompton Road, but
perhaps allowing a rather greater role for independent
architects, particularly in the 1880s.

The Estate Plan

The layout differed in some respects from that south of
Old Brompton Road. Nothing as spectacular as The
Boltons or as unassuming as Ifield Road was produced.
The characteristic Kensington ‘Gardens’ were much more
in evidence, with rows of houses backing directly on
communal but private ornamental grounds. The orthodox
street front of the houses was, however, preserved, and
the type of ‘Gardens’ where the houses presented their
‘fronts’ to the garden and their ‘backs’ to the street does
not occur. Apart from George and Peto's Collingham
Gardens the backs visible across a garden aspire only to
orderliness (Plate 94c).

Where streets approached the main roads north and
south, at Cromwell Road and Old Brompton Road, their
alignments were bent where this was necessary to meet
those roads at right-angles: thus Knaresborough Place and
Collingham Road, and (like Cresswell Gardens opposite)
Gledhow and Bina Gardens. (fn. n3)

Of about 430 houses hardly any were deliberately
detached and only 38 were semi-detached. For the many
terrace houses built in the 1860s and 1870s a repetitive
arrangement within each range, with all houses having the
front door and entrance hall on the same side, was more
favoured than that by which pairs of houses were given
mirrored plans with the front doors (and porticoes) of a
terrace grouped in twos. When a conspicuous change of
style came in the 1880s there was also a change of this
arrangement and mirrored plans were preferred.

Figure 88:

Mews arches built in c. 1874–6, elevations and plans

Figure 89:

No. 23 Bolton Gardens, elevation. J. Spicer, builder, 1872–3

Considerable importance was attached to the mews
throughout almost the whole period. The last, indeed,
became the biggest and finest, when Hesper Mews was
laid out on generous lines under the supervision of various
building lessees' architects in 1884–5. Colbeck Mews
(1876–84) also had its later stables architect-designed, by
George and Peto (Plate 96c). Most mews had the usual
arched entrance (fig. 88). One or two also presented flank
fronts to streets. Hesper Mews (1875–8) retains an
arcaded front to Knaresborough Place and the pleasant
balustraded single-storey front of Wetherby Mews (1871–5) to Bolton Gardens (Nos. 40–42) is probably original
with later enhancements.

Despite the prominence of the mews—relatively more
than twice as numerous as south of Old Brompton Road—the number of individual units was only about a quarter
of the number of houses.

One thing the occupants of the mews, and others, lacked
was public houses. Only one, in the extreme south-east
corner, was permitted—the Clarence, at No. 148 Old
Brompton Road.

The Spread of Houses 1865–96, and
their Builders

The first work was undertaken by experienced building
lessees and the chief of these was John Spicer. He was
evidently well-thought-of both by the Gunters' surveyors
George and Henry Godwin and by the Gunters' lawyer,
J. L. Tomlin, who moved in 1876–7 from one Spicer house
in the southern part of Bolton Gardens to another in this
area at No. 23 Bolton Gardens (fig. 89). (fn. 55) Spicer's first
work, from 1865, was in fact the continuation northward
across Old Brompton Road of his Bolton Gardens. Apart
from a smallish but important area where Old Brompton
Road approaches Earl's Court Road, which was given in
the 1870s to the building firm of William Corbett and
Alexander McClymont in similar continuation of their
work on the south side of Old Brompton Road, all the
southern half of this area (roughly south of a line drawn
north of Colbeck Mews) would have been given to Spicer.
As it was he built much of it, impressively, before his death
in 1883. (fn. 69) The other work of the 1870s was in the northern
half of the area. Here Robert Gunter had co-operated with
H. B. Alexander and Lord Kensington to carry Cromwell
Road westward in the late 1860s. To build on this important frontage another well-seasoned South Kensington
operator, William Jackson, was chosen and given leases
or lease-options of sites on the new and rather grandly residential Cromwell Road. In 1875, however, he gave up part
of his land, fronting southward on the new square of
Courtfield Gardens, to other builders, Richard Igglesden
and David Myers. (fn. 70) Most of Courtfield Gardens was built
either by the firm of Richard and Thomas Pargeter or by
the young William Radford, aged only 23 in 1873, when
he began at Nos. 15–33 (odd) Collingham Road. The first
three houses he took on building lease in this range seem,
perhaps for a reason related to his inexperience, to have
been actually built for him by Jackson. (fn. 71)

In this northern half the Gunters' advisers evidently
believed in spreading the work. Two established builders
at South Kensington occur in William Douglas on the east
side of Courtfield Gardens and William Watts as lessee
in Knaresborough Place, where another lessee was J. F.
Van Camp (Plate 89d). Big houses (with Scottish names)
were built in Cromwell Road by W. H. Cullingford, and
Joseph Frewing and Farnham and James Gait worked at
the west end of Collingham Place. Each had a Kensington
address except David Myers (Paddington), Van Camp
(Kilburn) and Watts (Belgravia). All this work was of the
1870s or earliest 1880s.

Spicer's work in what was called ‘Wetherby Road’, now
the line of Bolton and Wetherby Gardens, was not continued after 1877, leaving the site of Nos. 24–35 on the
south side of Bolton Gardens vacant. Perhaps he was
deterred by the failure of the houses called Bolton Gardens
West, immediately to the south in Old Brompton Road,
to sell, culminating in the bankruptcy of their builders,
Corbett and McClymont, in 1878. (fn. 72) In that year Spicer
suggested placing a large mews here instead of houses, and
when that was turned down by the Metropolitan Board
of Works (fn. 73) the ground was given over in 1882 to use as
tennis courts until the nineties. (fn. 74) By the late 1870s the old
style of Kensington town house was proving unattractive
to potential customers. Spicer in the last year of his life
was building unsuccessful houses at Nos. 46–50 (even)
Harrington Gardens, and the young William Radford was
no more successful with houses of the late seventies on
the south-east side of Courtfield Gardens. (fn. 55)

The crucial year was 1883, when Spicer died and his
intended ‘take’ was divided among many buildingtradesman lessees. (fn. 69) Gunter leases were granted either to
Spicer's son, a solicitor (and acquaintance of the Gunters'
solicitor), G. J. Spicer, who made sub-leases to the building lessees, or direct to building-tradesmen with Spicer's
son a consenting party. At a few sites (The Mansions in
Earl's Court Road, Nos. 40–47 Bramham Gardens, Nos.
18–31 Gledhow Gardens and No. 25 Wetherby Gardens)
G. J. Spicer is not known to have made a sub-lease and
may have retained them for his own benefit after
contracting-out the builder's work.

In any event the new lessees were promptly engaged
in a burst of building in a more fashionable style, which
was also carried into the northern half of the area when
the expiry of the lease of Earl's Court House allowed Barkston Gardens to be laid out in 1886.

The most prominent of the new lessees was perhaps
John Robinson Roberts, who in 1883 began a row of
houses at Nos. 46–50 (even) Harrington Gardens (Plate
93d) outwardly more or less identical with others he had
already built on the Alexander estate in Courtfield Road
(see page 178). In 1886 onwards he built most of the houses
and flats in Barkston Gardens (except, that is, the east
and west ends). He was active in other parts of London—Maida Vale, West Dulwich and South Hampstead (fn. 75) —but
put roots down here, lived in one of the houses, (fn. 55) and took
an interest in the fortunes of the Barkston Gardens
Hotel. (fn. 76) A range of houses over shops at Nos. 203–211
Earl's Court Road was built in 1886 as part of the same
development by James Whitaker of Hammersmith, who
also built Nos. I–II and 2–12 Barkston Gardens in the
same year. But since 1883 he had been building the conspicuous, pleasantly variegated, range called Nos. 1–18
Bramham Gardens on the north side of Bolton Gardens
(Plate 94b), in Spicer's former take, and there stumbled
over the resistance of buyers to big terrace houses, whatever their ‘style’, as flats became available. Whitaker was
declared bankrupt in 1887, (fn. 77) and his lease-options in Barkston Gardens passed to Roberts and another builder. (fn. 78) He
was soon freed of his bankruptcy, however, (fn. 79) his ‘unsaleable’ houses began to fill up, (fn. 55) and by 1890–1 he could
undertake as building lessee the blocks of flats between
Barkston Gardens and Earl's Court Road (Nos. 103–121
and 48–60 Barkston Gardens). (fn. 80) Other building-tradesman lessees for houses in the 1880s were H. A. Matthews (Bramham Gardens, 1885–6), Joseph Mears of
Hammersmith (Harrington Gardens, 1883–4, and Collingham Gardens, 1885–7) and William Willett (Wetherby
Gardens, 1883–4, and Bina Gardens, 1884–6). James
Baker built in Gledhow Gardens (1883–4) under subleases or contract from G. J. Spicer.

The influence of George and Peto's work of 1881–4 in
Harrington Gardens was very strong, and they themselves,
through the builders Peto Brothers, brought their own
captivating style to Nos. 1–18 Collingham Gardens (see
Chapter XII). But, as Whitaker discovered, the new
houses were not necessarily more immediately successful
than the old, and in 1884 what proved an important
departure for this part of Earl's Court was made with the
building of blocks of flats at The Mansions in Earl's
Court Road (by William Wheeler, perhaps under contract from G. J. Spicer, Plate 95a). These met a demand
and in the next six or seven years eleven other blocks of
flats were built in Earl's Court Road, Barkston Gardens
and Bramham Gardens. In the last an intended run of
eighteen houses (fn. 81) was changed in 1886 to a mixture of
houses and flats. Lessees were William Cooke (in lieu of
Whitaker during his bankruptcy) at York Mansions
(Nos. 83–101 Barkston Gardens and Earl's Court
Road, 1886–7, Plate 95a), S. A. Cumming of Hanwell
(Nos. 29–31 Bramham Gardens, 1893–5, Plate 95b)
and E. and J. W. Sage of Hammersmith (No. 28
Bramham Gardens, 1887–8).

The building period in this area was concluded, however, with a return to a range of big houses on the longvacant site at Nos. 24–35 Bolton Gardens in 1894–6
(building owner, Henry Bailey, Plate 94a)—perhaps in
turn encouraged by the sale of Whitaker's houses opposite
that had hung fire in the mid eighties. (fn. 55)

The origin of the capital to carry on these building
works is known very imperfectly but it is clear that the
Gunters themselves and their relations or connections
were a frequent source of money as mortgagees. (fn. 82) John
Spicer particularly had recourse to them, as did Frewing,
the Gaits, Roberts, Whitaker and Corbett and
McClymont. One or two other private individuals recur—Lady Price, for example, who lived in Lowndes Square,
took mortgages from Spicer and the Gaits, and also lent
money to Corbett and McClymont. Jackson mortgaged
property to Ransom, Bouverie's Bank (now part of Barclays), to whom Robert Gunter himself made a heavy
mortgage of his freeholds south of Cromwell Road. Van
Camp mortgaged houses in Knaresborough Place in 1876
to the Land Securities Company, and William Willett a
house in Bina Gardens in 1887 to the London Assurance
Company.

The Design of the Houses

The architectural control under which the building lessees
worked in the sixties and seventies does not directly
appear, but much if not all may probably be attributed
to George and Henry Godwin as the Gunters' surveyors,
although only Nos. 198–200 Old Brompton Road (built
by Corbett and McClymont, Plate 88c) and Laverton
Mews (by R. and T. Pargeter, Plate 96a, fig. 88) of 1874–6
immediately recall stylistic devices in the southern part
of the estate under their control. At Nos. 9 and 11–15
Bolton Gardens and No. 194 Old Brompton Road
(Plates 87a, 89a) Spicer's houses of 1865–6 are distinctive
enough to speak of the Godwins. Even more idiosyncratic
is the treatment of Spicer's Nos. 1–9 Gledhow Gardens
in Old Brompton Road (1867, Plate 87b), evidently at the
same architectural hands. Some of these Gledhow
Gardens houses have bowed windows—a very rare feature
in this area—and all are wholly stucco-faced, like no
others here except the very plain and old-fashioned houses
over shops built by Spicer further east at Nos. 148–176
(even) Old Brompton Road (1869–71, Plate 89b).
Elsewhere brick-and-stucco was universal until the
eighties.

For Spicer's big houses of 1869 onwards on the east-west line of Bolton, Gledhow and Wetherby Gardens
the Godwins (if it was they) gave him restrained designs
which almost recreate the effect of late-Georgian street
architecture with a little added bulk and Victorian detailing (Plate 90a). Some recall the houses of Tregunter Road
by the high proportions of their stuccoed ground floors.
Most have a more interesting Victorian formula for the
ground-floor façade with a satisfactorily concise version
of the pillared portico, and some noticeably correct detailing (fig. 92). Grouped in semi-detached pairs these three-bay houses mass effectively along the street. The cast-iron
gate piers in front of Nos. 16–23 Bolton Gardens are
solidly designed (fig. 89).

The other houses of the 1870s seem to show a looser
or perhaps more diverse architectural control. Jackson's
houses were probably effectively planned but are
outwardly gaunt and ordinary (Plate 89c). In the western
half of Courtfield Gardens (1873–8) the Pargeters used
a façade scheme a little reminiscent of Charles Aldin's
houses of some ten years earlier in Queen's Gate Place.
On the north side of the eastern half Igglesden and Myers
in 1876–8 built ‘classical’ fronts rather more correct than
usual, with nice ironwork, and possibly this indicates the
influence of the architect George Hughes, who was associated with them as a lessee (Plate 90b). The area of a
builder's ‘take’ did not, however, necessarily coincide with
a stylistic commitment: on the east side of Courtfield
Gardens a change of style occurs within a range taken on
lease by Jackson but is not perceptible where his houses
meet William Douglas's.

The architecture of the prominent houses and shops
built by Corbett and McClymont from 1874 onwards at
Nos. 231–239 Earl's Court Road and Nos. 212–246
Old Brompton Road (Plate 88a, 88b) is difficult to ignore,
or attribute. It does not quite suggest the Godwins, and
Corbett's correspondence is inconclusive whether it was
produced by the firm's own architect, F. N. Kemp. (fn. 83)
Structurally, a feature of some, at least, of the houses was
the segmental, fire-resistant, cemented roof used by the
firm at many of its houses south of Old Brompton Road. (fn. 84)
Whoever designed these fronts hit on a formula for the
upper-storey fenestration that was followed in Cheniston
Gardens (Plate 45c) and also at Nos. 1–14 and 17 Vicarage
Gate and Nos. 25–39 Kensington Church Street—houses
erected by other builders some years after Corbett and
McClymont's.

Behind their fronts almost all the houses of the area had
three rooms on the ground floor. (fn. 85) The rearmost room was
generally large and important, and sometimes top-lit. A
water closet was usually placed at the approach to this
room. The entrance hall often contained a fireplace near
the foot of the stairs. Only a minority of houses had a back
stairs (but the leaseholder of a house in Cromwell Road
thought it worth paying £1,500 in 1886 to provide one
for a tenant who wanted it (fn. 86) ). At the rear some of Spicer's
houses in Wetherby Gardens exhibit the flue-arches that
are a feature of, for example, the Queen's Gate Gardens
area of Kensington.

Figure 90:

Nos. 33 Collingham Road, plan William Radford,
builder, 1875

Some of the lease plans of houses, particularly at corners, look effective in an unsophisticated way, like the large
Radford house of 1875 at No. 33 Collingham Road—one
of the very few with anything like a ground-floor conservatory, even if a small one, in the glazed porch at the
rear (fig. 90).

The early 1880s saw some very old-fashioned-looking
houses put up here on the verge of the great change under
George and Peru's influence. At Nos. 60–64 Courtfield
Gardens in 1880–1 and at Nos. 46–50 Harrington
Gardens in 1882 (Plate 91d) Douglas and Spicer respectively built houses essentially unaffected by the new taste
(even though Spicer's bricks were actually red): both were
elderly men. The abruptness of the change is remarkably
visible at No. 29 Ashburn Place (Plate 91a, figs. 91–2).
This was begun by Spicer in 1875, perhaps as a low-built
estate-office, with a ground-floor front in the style he had
adopted in 1869, but it was carried up, about the time of
his death in 1883, in a quiet version of the new style, with
gables.

Henry Godwin was still active in 1886, but a number
of the builders working in the new fashion from 1883
onwards are known to have used their own architects—Walter Graves by Roberts in Harrington Gardens, (fn. n4)
Maurice Hulbert by Matthews in Bramham Gardens (fn. 88) and
(probably) Baker in Gledhow Gardens (fn. 89) and H. B.
Measures by Willett in Bina Gardens (Plate 93). (fn. 90) Additionally, it was probably R. W. Edis who designed the
sculptor Sir J. Edgar Boehm's house at No. 25 Wetherby
Gardens (Plate 94d, fig. 93), built by T. Boyce in 1883–4
(with modelled portico-columns signed by Boehm himself). (fn. 91)(fn. n5)
In Wetherby Gardens at Nos. 12–19A (Plate
91b, fig. 94) Measures in 1883–4 supervised but probably
did not design for Willett a steep-roofed range very like
the slightly earlier (and now demolished) Nos. 4–16 (even)
Harrington Gardens nearby: like them it strikingly
departed from the old manner without approaching the
new. (fn. 90)

Something of the same stylistic ambiguity marks the
work over these years of the builder Joseph Mears at
Nos. 28–44 Harrington Gardens although their basic
formula is the same as at Spicer's old-fashioned houses
immediately westward (Plate 91c, 91d). A year or two later,
in 1885–7, Mears built Nos. 19–30 Collingham
Gardens (Plate 92), which represent, perhaps more
favourably, the transmutation of an artistic style—here
George and Peto's—to a builder's ordinary speculative
use. The new decorative motifs occur but not consistently
and disposed in a tamed and tidied-up scheme. Like
Mears's Harrington Gardens houses they show the faith
of whoever was his architect in revisionist versions of the
Kensington portico, without its pillars.

Some of the last houses built in the old fashion had been
very large—Spicer's Nos. 10 and 11 Wetherby Gardens
rise through five full storeys (Plate 91b)—but the houses
of the 1880s were hardly less spacious. One of Roberts's
houses in Barkston Gardens had ten bedrooms, a double
drawing-room in Louis XVI style, a lounge and conservatory with tiled floors, a dining-room with walnut columns, panelled walls and ribbed ceiling, a tile-floored
smoking lounge with an oriental carved-wood mantel, a
library, a billiard-room, one bathroom and one water
closet. Another had twenty rooms plus a boudoir and
billiard-room. (fn. 92)

The Occupation of the Houses

Generally all the houses of this area were throughout
rather slow to attract occupants: (fn. 55) this part of Kensington
demanded patience and some financial resilience of its
house-builders. A wait of from two to four years seems
to have been quite usual before a range of houses was
occupied. Even in the heyday of the 1870s houses would
go quickly only if they were, like Nos. 15–33 Collingham
Road (Plate 90c), well sited, and not even then at Nos. 11–15
Bolton Gardens and No. 194 Old Brompton Road,
despite ‘the green view from every room’ (Plate 87a). This
does not seem to indicate any outright failure of the
development to attract the desired type of resident: rather,
perhaps, the deliberateness in a well-stocked market of rich
Victorians. The census of 1881 for representative streets
(Bolton and Wetherby Gardens, Cronwell Road and Collingham
place) shows that on average each member of the
family had a servant to attend on them, with at least a
few butlers in each street. (fn. 93)

Figure 92:

No. 29 Ashburn Place, detail of porch

The new-style houses of the eighties were also sometimes slow to go, like the Sages’ houses in the north-east
part of Bramham Gardens (1886–7) and Baker's houses
of 1883–4 in Gledhow Gardens. A remedy taken quite
early was conversion: two of Corbett and McClymont's
big houses in Old Brompton Road were eventually run
together in 1882 as Coleherne Mansions and Roberts made
three of his Barkston Gardens houses into a hotel in the
early 1890s. (fn. 55)

Flats

The architecture of the blocks of flats does not require
much notice. In 1906 A. E. Street praised, tepidly, the
pioneer Mansions in Earl's Court Road, (fn. 94) and at the northern block (Nos. 3 and 4 The Mansions, 1885–6, Plate
95a) the insouciance with which the big windows are struck
into the vaguely Jacobethan front is not without appeal. (fn. n6)
Roberts's flats in Barkston Gardens, served by an
‘American Elevator’, were very large, with three to five
reception rooms and five to eight bedrooms, but not, it
would seem, any form of ‘central’ heating. (fn. 95) William
Cooke's block, at Nos. 83–101, and to a lesser extent, his
York Mansions fronting Earl's Court Road are in outward aspect sufficiently similar to Kensington Mansions
and Nevern Mansions on the Edwardes estate to indicate
that they are designed by the same unknown architect (see
page 309).

Later History

The early years of this century saw some decline from the
area's pristine period but not very dramatically. The 1913
Post Office Directory suggests an area still perfectly ‘possible’ for respectable occupation but with uses other than
private family residence well established. At that time
house-advertisements stress the excellence of the public
transport by bus and underground railway: the Piccadilly
line opened in 1906 and estate agents claimed the
improved access to shopping areas would raise housevalues.
One advertiser, however, thought it well to say no
railway was so near his house as to cause vibration. (fn. 96)

The conversion of unmanageable houses to flats was
evidenced in 1913 at Nos. 68–70 Courtfield Gardens,
where William Radford made flats in four houses, two of
which had never been regularly occupied since building. (fn. 97)
A parallel and more visible change at about the same time
was the conversion of mews stables to ‘bijou’ cottages—for
example in Gaspar Mews (Plate 96d) by Stanley-Barrett
and Driver in about 1915. (fn. 98) After the war Walter Cave
as the Gunters’ surveyor converted Nos. 29 and 30 Gledhow Gardens to flats for single ladies in 1922 (fn. 99) and next
door the architect Gertrude Leverkus made a scheme for
Womens Pioneer Housing Limited to convert No. 31 as
flats for fifteen ‘women workers’ in 1925. (fn. 100) The stable-to-cottage
transformation brought architecture of a strangely
suburban Arts-and-Crafts type to Courtfield Gardens at
No. 10 Colbeck Mews in 1920 (Plate 96e) (fn. 101) and to
Nos. 3–6 Laverton Place in 1927–8. (fn. 102)

Generally external alterations for changing use have
been done with some care. At Nos. 11–13 Bolton
Gardens, for example, the added and enlarged windows
are (in contrast to the drainpipes) unobtrusive.

The changes to the fabric since the 1939–45 war have
not been very extensive. The biggest building, on a ‘new’
site, the London International Hotel, is discussed on page
338. The dealings with two old buildings bear mention
for the light they throw on changing attitudes to preservation. In 1953–5 a war-damaged mews-conversion at
No. 67 Courtfield Gardens was reinstated with a new
front in the manner of the day applied to what remained
of the old building: the planners of the local authority,
who from 1951 had not spared trouble over the matter,
would have preferred (unlike the agents of the ground
landlord) an even more emphatic ‘break’ with the style
of the adjacent, and bigger-scaled, old houses. (fn. 103) In 1979
No. 147A Cromwell Road was destined for rebuilding
in the manner of that day but the local authority required
the rear façade to Collingham Place to be preserved. In
the event this proved impracticable and here a replica front
was applied to the back of an otherwise ‘modern’-looking
building, bringing the architects an Environmental Award
from the Borough in 1983. (fn. 104)

Footnotes

n1. In a sneering description of Hunter's ‘cottage’ (perhaps before its extension with wings) his rival Jesse Foot speaks of two lions
passant on the front parapet and electricity conductors on ‘each gable wall’.

n2. Names of builders and some architects and the dates of surviving structures will be found on pages 212–14 with references to
authorities.

n3. An apparent quirk of planning is the narrow ‘area’, closed at each end, between the north side of Collingham Gardens and the
south side of Courtfield Gardens.

n4. This is shown by Graves's design of closely similar elevations for Roberts in Courtfield Road, and his design of an addition to
one of the houses here as it was being finished.

n5. Edis had designed Boehm's country house some three years before: moreover the Wetherby Gardens house has resemblances
to Edis's Nos.59 and 61 Brook Street, Mayfair. (An even closer resemblance is to a house (No.26) in Lyndhurst Gardens, Hampstead,
a development by Willetts of the 1880s.)

n6. The masonry of the first, southern, block, Nos. 1 and 2, shows some small areas not worked to a fair surface.

31. John Hunter, A Treatise of the Blood … To which is prefixed, A Short Account of the Author’s Life, by his
Brother-in-Law, Everard Home, 1794, p. xxxviii et seq.:
John Middleton, View of the Agriculture of Middlesex,
1798, pp. 341–3: Stephen Paget, John Hunter. Man of
Science and Surgeon (1728–93), 1897, pp. 86n., 120.

69. The information about Spicer's and other builders' activities is mainly derived from the Middlesex Deeds Register, for which see particularly the index entries under
‘Gunter’, and the Kensington District Surveyor's
Returns. Some sources are specified in the references
on pages 212–14.